By fields of cotton and soybeans where his bees forage and pollinate, Foster Hensel pries open the lid of one of his beehives, setting off a rising hum from inside. "You hear the difference in the sound?" he asks, pumping the bellows of a small smoker to try and settle the bees. "They're getting a little aggravated." What has Hensel concerned is a few miles down the road.
In Boyce, a small town in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana, construction is starting on a 300-acre data center site. The beekeeper worries the new warehouse-like facilities will raise his utility bills or change the local environment. And he asks why there's not more information.
"Let me quote a good writer, Shakespeare — there's something rotten in Denmark," Hensel said. "There's something wrong with that." The negotiations between the data center developer — Dallas-based Applied Digital Corp. — and local officials were shielded under nondisclosure agreements (NDAs). In Rapides Parish, the secrecy left residents with unanswered questions and distrust of their local leaders.
But the use of NDAs for negotiations on data centers is common across the country, according to experts and those in the industry. And the practice has faced opposition from the public and some lawmakers. Bills to ban NDAs for data centers have been introduced in several states, including Michigan, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Ohio.
Last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro banned their use on data center projects by agencies he oversees. Eric Bonds is a professor and environmental sociologist at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia.
He and his research partner found that NDAs were used in at least 25 of 31 data center projects they surveyed there last year. He said NDAs seem to be "standard practice." "After we published our research," Bonds said, "we heard back from reporters and activists kind of around the country from Arizona, Indiana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania." Companies and local officials who sign nondisclosure agreements say they're needed to protect corporate secrets and to negotiate freely. But experts say they also give data center developers an edge as they move from county to county — in this case, parish to parish — seeking the best deals.
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